A wide variety of devices has been developed to display and merchandise products. Prior art includes flat shelves with separators or dividers to present products in straight rows for better shelf management. U.S. Pat. No. 5,803,276 discloses a divider with lateral stabiliser feet that is extendable longitudinally for deeper shelves. Further alternatives have included front and rear tracks attached to the shelf to which longitudinal tracks are attached to move product forward as disclosed in International patent publication WO2007071024.
These arrangements were further improved by angling a flat shelf fitted with dividers to create a broad genus of gravity feed products. However, such flat shelf surfaces had a poor co-efficient of friction and products did not slide effectively.
A further advance, as disclosed in U.S. design Pat. 275058, involved glides with slip surfaces. They facilitated the gravity feed but had the disadvantage of having a fixed footprint. This was further improved by gravity feed glides that had adjustable front and rear fitments to accommodate products of varying sizes, as in U.S. Pat. No. 7,182,209.
An alternative showcase involved the combining of the glide and the divider into one separator device as disclosed in the applicant's earlier U.S. Pat. No. 6,082,557. Here the upright device has two lateral base protrusions with fine longitudinal ribs on their upper surfaces to gravity feed product. Channels to gravity feed items are created when two such devices are placed side by side on an open shelf frame. Ribs under the front and rear engage in a selected pair of slots arranged in two rows at the front and rear of the shelf frame. The ability to gravity feed is improved but product has to be taken off the shelf to re-configure the shelf.
Typically, divider devices include front lateral flanges that provide stops at the shelf front to prevent forward movement of items off the shelf. Again, product has to be taken off the shelf to reconfigure the shelf. U.S. Pat. No. 5,971,173 discloses an alternative configuration in which a discrete stop extends across the front of the shelf and each divider clips to the stop.
A further advance involved the development of an integral slip mat to which independent dividers are fitted. This mat has a crosshatch of interlocking lateral and transverse ribs into which protrusions on the base of the divider engage. A known system includes a mat that can be adjusted to accommodate a wide variety of shelf sizes by first piercing the top membrane of the mat and then snapping off the bottom. The system also has dividers with weakened sections to allow them to be shortened for shallower shelves. However, these dividers are difficult to align in the longitudinal channels in the mat, and when engaged in the channels are difficult to disengage, rendering realignment of products on the shelf slow and time consuming. Systems of this general kind are disclosed, for example, in U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,874,846 and 6,982,260.
It would be advantageous if a system could be provided that permitted an operator to quickly and easily disengage, re-engage and align dividers without any need to clear product from the shelf.
Within the genus of gravity feed systems it is known to move product forward by means of rollers. Disclosures include U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,089,385, 6,409,026 and 6,497,326. Prior art for both retail and industrial application has included single roller tracks which when aligned in parallel can bias product from the rear to the front of a shelf. Such systems have the disadvantage that they are complex and costly to manufacture, and are designed to be fitted to specialised shelving.
Therefore, it is an object of a second aspect of the invention to provide a roller assembly that at least in part improves on prior art systems.
Reference to any prior art in the specification is not, and should not be taken as, an acknowledgment or any form of suggestion that this prior art forms part of the common general knowledge in Australia or any other jurisdiction or that this prior art could reasonably be expected to be ascertained, understood and regarded as relevant by a person skilled in the art.